Chapter 7 Concluding Remarks
7.1 Findings of the Thesis
The present study takes a data-based perspective to investigate how antonyms in Mandarin Chinese function in text. The analysis of the study is based mainly on Jones’ (2002) functional framework of antonymy. Our Chinese data are found to manifest the eight textual functions of antonymy identified in Jones (2002), i.e., Ancillary Antonymy, Coordinated Antonymy, Comparative Antonymy, Distinguished Antonymy, Transitional Antonymy, Negated Antonymy, Extreme Antonymy, and Idiomatic Antonymy. In addition, three residual textual functions of antonymy identified by Jones (2002) also show up in our Chinese data, i.e., Specified Antonymy, Associative Antonymy, and Simultaneous/Equivalent Antonymy. Still, all the above textual functions cannot account for all the Chinese data. Two new textual functions of antonym co-occurrences are identified. The first one is Transitive Antonymy, i.e.,
antonyms co-occur in an agent-patient schema. The other is Negated Ancillary Antonymy, i.e., antonyms co-occur to signal a nearby contrast, and one of the members is negated. In total, thirteen different textual functions of antonymy have been identified in Mandarin Chinese. Among the thirteen textual functions, Coordinated Antonymy and Ancillary Antonymy are the most dominant, collectively accounting for 63.2% of the database sentences.
To establish a representative set of antonymous pairs in Mandarin Chinese, the present study includes antonymous pairs in different traditional categories of oppositeness. It is found that an antonymous pair’s traditional category of oppositeness affects its functional distribution. Typically, gradable pairs favor Transitional Antonymy, complementary pairs favor Specified Antonymy and Comparative Antonymy, relational pairs favor Transitional Antonymy and Transitive Antonymy, and directional pairs favor Negated Antonymy and Idiomatic Antonymy.
It is also found in the present study that an antonymous pair’s grammatical category affects how it functions in text. Typically, adjective pairs favor Ancillary Antonymy or Coordinated Antonymy, verbal pairs favor Coordinated Antonymy, and nominal pairs favor Coordinated Antonymy, Transitive Antonymy, Specified Antonymy, Comparative Antonymy, and Distinguished Antonymy.
Some antonymous pairs in Mandarin Chinese have a counterpart in Classical Chinese that is still used in Modern Mandarin. In the present study, an antonymous pair’s extent of modernization is taken into consideration. It is found that vernacular pairs (e.g., dui/cuo and lao/nianqing), in contrast with their counterparts in Classical Chinese (e.g., shi/fei and lao/shao), exhibit wider functional distribution or more flexibility in working with a variety of lexico-syntactic frames.
Due to the fact that Modern Chinese is evolving towards a situation where almost all content words contain at least two syllables to maintain a disyllabic
rhythmic pattern (Chao 1968; Li and Thompson 1981), an antonymous pair’s morpho-syllabic structure is also taken into consideration in the present study. In general, monosyllabic antonymous pairs prefer textual functions associated with four-character lexico-syntactic frames, such as Coordinated Antonymy and Transitional Antonymy.
In short, how antonyms in Mandarin Chinese function in text is influenced, to a certain extent, by their traditional category of oppositeness, grammatical category, extent of modernization, and morpho-syllabic structure. However, even though an antonymous pair’s functional distribution may be affected by various linguistic factors, it does not follow that how an antonymous pair functions in text is restricted by its these factors (Jones 2002:144).
A set of synonymous pairs, i.e., nan/nu, nanren/nuren, nansheng/nusheng, nanxing/nuxing, and nanzi/nuzi ‘man/woman’, show variations as they are used in text.
Coordinated Antonymy is strongly preferred by nan/nu and nanzi/nuzi, Specified Antonymy is favored by nansheng/nusheng and nanxing/nuxing, and Comparative Antonymy is preferred by nanxing/nuxing. The pair nanren/nuren, unlike its synonymous partners, illustrates the least skewed functional distribution. The findings suggest that distributional differences may reflect how near synonyms differ from each other in meaning.
The textual functions of antonymy in English and Mandarin Chinese are compared, with the focus on antonymous pairs selected both in Jones (2002) and in the present study. It is assumed that synonymous pairs in different languages (e.g., confirm/deny in English and chengren/fouren in Mandarin Chinese) perform similar textual functions. However, cross-linguistic discrepancies in how synonymous pairs function in text may arise from language-specific structural characteristics.
From a constructional perspective, each textual function of antonymy in
Mandarin Chinese has its typical lexico-syntactic frames. In other words, it is found that how antonyms function in text depends largely on the collocational environment.
In Mandarin Chinese, there are many four-character lexico-syntactic frames that allow antonym co-occurrences, as identified in the following:
(151) Coordinated Antonymy
•
…antonym X…antonym Y (e.g., shi dui shi cuo ‘be right be wrong’)•
monosyllabic interrogative + antonym X + monosyllabic interrogative + antonym Y (e.g., shei dui shei cuo ‘who right who wrong’)(152) Transitional Antonymy
•
xian + antonym X + hou + antonym Y ‘first…then…’•
cong/you + antonym X + dao + antonym Y ‘from…to…’(153) Negated Antonymy
•
(zhi ‘only’) + antonym X + bu ‘not’ + antonym Y ‘only…not…’(154) Comparative Antonymy
•
antonym X + monosyllabic stative verb + yu ‘than’ + antonym Y (155) Idiomatic Antonymy•
bu jin ze tui ‘either to make progress or recede’The above lexico-syntactic frames fit especially well with monosyllabic antonymous pairs, yielding a large number of four-character phrases.
Finally, it is found that antonym co-occurrences in Mandarin Chinese prefer a particular sequencing in text. In Mandarin Chinese, a positive word tends to precede its negative antonymous partner (e.g., dui/cuo ‘right/wrong’), and a word with a higher frequency tends to precede its antonymous partner (e.g., mai/mai ‘to buy/to sell’). The notion of positivity, which can be interpreted in psychological,
metaphorical, and socio-cultural terms, is the most dominant factor affecting antonym sequencing in Mandarin Chinese. In addition, the more positive the first member of an antonymous pair is, the more preferred the canonical sequence tends to be. However, when perspective shifts take place in text, the other sequencing order may show up.